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FOUR

Instantly my hand flew to the sword lying across my knees, but I didn’t draw it. These soldiers seemed to be acting as an escort or honor guard, I thought, rather than a band of attackers.
When one turned slightly, I noticed the red-and-gold rampant lion stitched on the front of his blouse. The pattern matched Dworkin’s—these had to be his men.
I allowed myself to relax. We should be safe in their care. So close to this mysterious Juniper, what could go wrong?
The carriage slowed enough for them to keep up with us. Trying to appear uncurious, I opened the window again and pulled back the curtain a bit, studying the rider closest to us. Thick black braids hung down behind his rounded silver helmet, and he had a long, thin black mustache that flapped as he rode. His arms seemed odd, I decided—a little too long. And they seemed to be bending halfway between shoulder and elbow, as if they had an extra joint.
Suddenly he turned and looked straight at me. His slitted yellow eyes caught the light, glinting like a cat’s with an almost opalescent fire.
Swallowing, I let the curtain fall. Thus hidden, I continued to study him. These might be Dworkin’s guards, I thought, but they weren’t human. Nor did they have the unpleasant features of hell-creatures. So who—or what—were they?
Taking a deep breath, I forced myself to turn away. I’d seen enough. No sense brooding on questions I couldn’t yet answer.
My attention now focused on Freda, who had begun to shuffle her Tarot cards and lay them out again. Every few minutes she rearranged them into a different pattern, sometimes circular, sometimes diagonal, once square with a cascading pattern in the center.
“Solitaire?” I asked, trying to get her attention. Perhaps I could learn more from her.
“No.”
“I prefer games for two players, myself.”
“Games are for children and old men.”
I leaned forward, tilting my head and looking at her deck more carefully now. Rather than the standard Tarot cards such as any wisewoman or soothsayer might employ, filled with religious and astrological figures, these showed men and women I didn’t recognize and places I had never been—a strange castle, a dark forest glade, even a romantic beach bathed in the warm glow of moonlight . . . or moonslight, rather, for two moons hung in the sky—the artist’s idea of a joke, or a real place? I could no longer be sure.
Freda gathered the cards, shuffled seven times, and dealt out fifteen, three lines of five cards each. Only portraits of men and women came up. Most had features similar enough to Dworkin’s to be related to him.
“What do you see?” I finally asked after the waiting became impossible to bear.
“Our family.” She pointed to the cards before her. “Nine princes of Chaos, all torn asunder. Six princesses of Chaos, where do they wander.”
“I know fortune-tellers are always vague,” I said, taking a stab at humor. “But at least it rhymes, almost.”
“It is part of an old nursery verse:
I had never heard it before. And yet it did fit.
“A bit grim,” I said.
She shrugged. “I did not write it.”
With a start, I realized we were no longer speaking Tantari, but some other language, a richer one with a lilting rhythm. It spilled from her tongue like water from a glass, and I understood every word as though I had been speaking it all my life. How did I know it? More magic? Had I come under some spell without even realizing it?
Stammering a bit, unable to help myself, I asked her, “W-what language is this?”
“It’s Thari, of course,” she said, giving me the sort of odd, puzzled look you’d give the village idiot when he asked why water was wet.
Thari . . . It sounded right, somehow, and I knew on some inner level she spoke the truth. But how did I know it? When had I learned it?
My every thought and memory told me I never had.
And yet . . . and yet, now I spoke it like I’d known it my entire life. And I found it increasingly difficult to recall Tantari, my native tongue, as though it belonged to some distant, hazy dream.
“You have been in Shadow a long time, haven’t you?” she said with a sigh. “Sometimes it is easy to forget what that can do to you . . . ”
In Shadow? What did that mean?
Remembering the look she’d given me when I asked what language we spoke, I bit back my questions. I wouldn’t appear foolish or ignorant again, if I could help it.
Instead, I said, “Yes, I suppose I have been gone too long.” I didn’t know what else to say, and I didn’t want to volunteer too much and reveal my ignorance. “I hadn’t seen Dworkin in many years.”
“You still look confused,” she said, and then she gave a kinder laugh and reached out to pat my hand. Her skin, soft as silk, smelled of lavender and honey. “It does not matter.”
I smiled. Now we were getting somewhere.
“Wouldn’t you be confused, too?” I asked. “Pulled from my bed in the middle of the night to fight hell-creatures, trundled off in this ludicrous carriage, then thrown in here for a frantic midnight ride—all with no questions answered?”
“Probably.” She cleared her throat. “Thari is the primal tongue,” she said matter-of-factly, as though lecturing a small child who hadn’t learned his lessons properly. “It is the source of all languages in all the Shadow worlds. It is a part of you, just as everything around us is part of Chaos. You do remember the Courts of Chaos, don’t you?”
I shook my head, once again feeling foolish and ignorant. “Never been there, I’m afraid.”
“A pity. They are lovely, in their way.” Her eyes grew distant, remembering. I could tell she liked that place . . . the Courts of Chaos, she’d called it.
Hoping for more answers, I said, “It’s been quite a night. Or day now, I suppose. What do you think of all this?” I made a vague, sweeping gesture that covered the carriage, the riders, her cards. “What does it portend?”
“War is coming. All the signs are there. Everyone says so, especially Locke. He has been playing general long enough, he is bound to be good at it. But we will be safe enough in Juniper, I think. At least for now.”
“And this Juniper?”
“You have never been there, either?”
I shook my head. So much for my plan to keep my ignorance to myself.
“It is nothing like the Courts of Chaos, but for a Shadow, it is really quite lovely. Or used to be.”
That didn’t really help. So many new questions . . .  Juniper . . . Shadows . . . the Courts of Chaos—what were they?
I glanced at the window again, thinking about Chaos. At least that name sounded familiar. Reading from the Great Book was part of every religious holiday in Ilerium, and I had heard some of the most famous passages hundreds of times over the years. Our most sacred scriptures told how the Gods of Chaos wrought the Earth from nothingness, then fought over their creation. They were supposed to be great, magical beings who would someday return to smite the wicked and reward the pious.
As a soldier, I had never put much faith in anything I couldn’t see or touch. Deep down, I had always believed the stories set forth in the Great Book were nothing more than parables designed to teach moral lessons to children. But now, after all I had seen and done this night, it began to make a certain amount of sense. If the stories were literally true . . . 
I swallowed. The Gods of Chaos were supposed to return with fire and steel to punish those who didn’t believe. Perhaps the hell-creatures marked the beginning of their return. Perhaps we had been working against the Gods of Chaos all along and hadn’t realized it.
For they shall smite the wicked . . . 
No, I decided, I had to have misunderstood. The scriptures didn’t fit. The hell-creatures killed everyone, from priests to tradesmen, from doddering crones to the youngest of children. No gods could have sent such an army.
What were the Courts of Chaos, and where did Dworkin fit into all of this?
Freda seemed to sense my confusion. Smiling, she reached out and patted my hand again.
“I know it’s a lot for you,” she said. “Father did you no favors in letting you grow up in a distant Shadow. But on the other hand, that may be why you are still alive when so many others are not. I think he means you for something greater.”
I frowned. “You think so? What?”
“We can try to find out.”
In one quick motion, she gathered her deck of Tarot cards into a neat stack and set it in front of me. She tapped the top card once with her index finger.
“This deck has forty-six Trumps. Shuffle them well, then turn the top one. Let’s see what they tell us.”
Chuckling, I shook my head. “I don’t believe in fortune telling.”
“I do not tell fortunes. As Father says, even in Chaos there is a grand pattern emerging, truths and truisms if you will. The Trumps reflect them. Those who are trained—as I am—can sometimes see reflected in the cards not only what is, but what must be. Since the whole family is gathering in Juniper right now, it might be best for us to know where you stand . . . and who will stand with you.”
Giving a shrug, I said, “Very well.” I didn’t think it could hurt.
I picked up the cards. The backs had been painted a royal blue, with a rampant lion in gold in the middle. They were a little thicker than parchment, but hard and chill to the touch, with a texture almost like polished ivory,
I cut them in half, shuffled them together a couple of times, then set them down in front of Freda. The palms of my hands tingled faintly. A light sweat covered my face. Somehow, touching the cards had made me distinctly uncomfortable.
“Turn the first Trump,” she said.
I did so.
It showed Dworkin, but he was dressed as a fool in red and yellow silks, complete with bells on his cap and long pointed shoes that curled at the toes. It was the last thing I had expected to see, and I had to choke back a laugh.
“That’s ridiculous!” I said.
“Odd . . . ” Freda said, frowning. “The first turned is usually a place, not a person.” She set the card to the side, face up.
“Meaning . . . ?” I asked.
“Dworkin, the center of our family, who is now or will be the center of your world.”
I said, “Dworkin is no fool.”
“What matters is the person pictured on the card, not his clothing. Aber made these cards for me. Everyone knows he’s a bit of a prankster.”
Suddenly I had a new name to remember: Aber. Aber the prankster. I thought I might like him. And she seemed to assume I knew who he was.
“Turn another card,” she told me.
I did so. It depicted a younger man, fifteen or sixteen years old at most, dressed in yellows and browns. Without a doubt, he had to be another of Dworkin’s children—they shared the same eyes and strong chin. He wore a hat adorned with a set of preposterously large elk antlers and looked slightly bored, like he wanted to be off on adventures instead of having to sit for this miniature portrait. He held up a broadsword with both hands. It looked too long and too heavy for him. Somehow, he struck me as familiar, though I would have sworn we had never met—or had we?
Freda sucked in a surprised breath.
“Who is he?” I asked.
“Alanar,” she whispered.
Again, the name didn’t sound familiar, but I couldn’t rid myself of the feeling he and I had met somewhere before. I could half picture him lying in a pool of blood . . . but where? When?
“Maybe he’s coming back,” Freda said.
“No,” I said with certainty. “He’s dead.”
“How do you know?” she asked, searching my eyes with her own. “You haven’t met him.”
“I—don’t know.” I frowned, fumbling for the memory, finding it elusive. “Isn’t he dead?”
“He’s been missing for more than a year. Nobody’s heard from him or been able to contact him, even with his Trump. I thought he was dead. Everyone does. But none of us has any proof.”
Contact him . . . with his Trump? I looked down at the card, puzzling over that odd turn of phrase. Stranger and stranger, I thought.
“If you haven’t seen a body,” I said, trying to sound comforting though I knew it was a lie, knew that he was dead, “there is reason for hope.”
She shook her head. “Our enemies do not often leave bodies. If he is dead, we will never know it.”
I found myself agreeing. After battles, we had seldom been able to recover our dead comrades from lands the hell-creatures controlled. What they actually did with the corpses remained open to conjecture—and the guesses were never very pleasant.
Eyes distant, Freda shook her head sadly. I realized that she had cared deeply for young Alanar. We had something in common, then; I had lost Helda . . . she had lost her brother.
Swallowing, I reached out and gave her hand a sympathetic squeeze. “Best not to dwell on it,” I said softly. “These have been hard times for everyone.”
“You are right, of course.” Taking a deep breath, Freda placed Alanar’s card on the table, a little below Dworkin’s jester and to the right. Next to each other, their resemblance was even more striking. Clearly they were father and son.
“Pick again,” she said, indicating the Trumps.
Silently, I did so. It was another young man, this one dressed in browns and greens, with a wide pleasant version of Dworkin’s face. A faint dueling scar marked his left cheek, but he had a genial smile. He carried a bow in one hand and what looked like a wine flask in the other. A trickle of wine ran down his lips and beaded underneath his chin.
A young drunkard, the card seemed to suggest.
“Taine,” Freda announced, keeping her expression carefully neutral.
“I don’t know him,” I said.
“I think he is dead, too.”
“I’m sorry.”
We went through four more cards rapidly. Each showed a man between the ages of twenty and forty. Most bore some resemblance to Dworkin—either the eyes, the shapes of the faces, or the way in which they held themselves. His offspring almost certainly, I decided. It seemed he’d kept busy with a number of women over the years. How many children had he sired? And with such a large family, how had he still found so much time to spend with me during my own youth—all the while pretending to be unmarried? The next time I had him alone, I intended to ask.
Each of these cards Freda placed below Dworkin’s, circling the edge of the table. In all, counting Alanar and Taine, she thought four of Dworkin’s sons were dead. I didn’t recognize either of the other two.
Then I turned over a card that showed a man with my face, only his eyes were brown to my blue. He dressed all in dark browns and yellows, and he held a slightly crooked sword almost defiantly. I didn’t know if it was a private joke, but certainly the crooked sword seemed to imply one.
“Who is he?” I asked hesitantly. He looked familiar, too. Where had we met? And when?
“Do you know him?”
“He looks a lot like me . . . ”
I held the card a minute, just staring at it, until she took it out of my hand and placed it below the others.
“Mattus,” she said. “His name is Mattus.”
“He’s dead, too,” I said numbly.
“How do you know?” she demanded, voice rising sharply.
I shrugged helplessly. “I don’t now. It’s like . . . like an old memory, distant and hazy. Or maybe a dream. I can almost see it, but not quite. I only know he was in it, though, and I saw him die.”
“What happened to him?” she went on. “How did he die?”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I can’t quite remember,” But I felt certain it hadn’t been pleasant, though I couldn’t bring myself to say so to Freda. I didn’t think she’d take the news well. Clearly she had cared for Mattus.
She sighed.
“Maybe it was only a dream,” I told her, trying to sound a little reassuring, a little hopeful, though deep inside I knew it for a lie. “Perhaps they are both still alive, somewhere.”
“Do not dismiss your dreams so easily. They are often powerful portents of the future. Over the years, I have had hundreds of dreams that proved to be true. If you say both Alanar and Mattus are dead, and you saw them die in a dream, it may very well be so.”
“It was only a dream.”
“Perhaps I believe because you saw it in a dream.”
“As you say,” I said with a small shrug. Most of the time, I put as little stock in dreams as in fortune-tellers.
Sitting back, I regarded her and her cards. It seemed she shared Dworkin’s strengths as well as his flaws. He had never been one to shy away from bad news, no matter how terrible. It was one lesson I had learned well from him.
I said, “Tell me about Mattus.”
“Like Alanar, he has been missing for about a year. Nobody has been able to contact him. He always had a quick temper, though, and one night he stormed off after a shouting match with Locke . . . and that was the last anyone heard of him.”
Locke was a disagreeable-looking, puffed-up man on one of the other Trumps I had drawn. She had mentioned him earlier, I recalled, with a disparaging note in her voice. Clearly they were at odds.
She added, “I had hoped Mattus would get over his sulk and simply show up one day, forgiving Locke and taking up where we had all left off, before . . . ” She smiled wistfully and blinked back tears. “But that is not your concern right now, Oberon. Please, go on. Draw again.”
Quickly, I turned the next card.
“Aber,” she said. She added him to the other eight Tarot cards to form a circle around the top of the table.
I leaned forward for a better look at this prankster who painted cards so well. He was ruggedly handsome—at least as portrayed on the card—and he dressed all in deep reds, from his leggings to his tunic, from his gloves to his long, flowing cape. It was hard to tell, but I thought we looked about the same age. He had short brown hair, a close-cropped brown beard, and steady gray-green eyes. In his portrait he struck a valiant pose, but instead of a sword, he held a long paint brush. I gave a mental chuckle. Truly, he had a sense of humor that appealed to me.
I also saw a bit of Dworkin in him, the oddly whimsical side that only came out on rare occasions, usually at high holidays or festivals when he had drunk too much wine. Then he would delight one and all with small tricks of the hand, making coins appear and disappear, or recite epic tales of ancient heroes and their adventures.
It must have been a trick of the light, but as I studied Aber’s card intently, I would have sworn that it took on an almost lifelike appearance. It seemed to me that the tiny image blinked and started to turn its head—but before anything more could happen, Freda reached out and covered it with her palm.
“Do not!” she said in a warning tone.
I raised my eyes to her face, which had suddenly gone cold and hard. Perhaps, I thought, there was more to her than I first suspected. This was no mere fortune-teller, but a strong woman who had suddenly moved to action and taken charge of the situation. I admired her for that; I had never found much to like in weak-willed females. A woman of fire and steel added extra passion to a love affair.
“Why?” I asked blankly.
“It is already cramped in here. We do not need his company right now. And Father would be quite annoyed with me if I let him drag you away.”
“Very well,” I said, confused. For now, I had to trust her to look out for my best interests. Leaning back, I folded my arms and gave her my most trustworthy look. “I wasn’t trying to cause you trouble.”
She sighed, her manner softening. “No, not . . . trouble. Aber can be a . . . a distraction. That’s a good word for it. And a distraction is not what we need right now.”
I tilted my head and studied her cards from what I hoped would prove a safe distance. The more I thought about it, the more certain I became that Aber’s picture had moved. But cards couldn’t come to life, could they?
After all the magic and wonders I had witnessed over the last few hours, suddenly I wasn’t so sure.

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FOUR

Instantly my hand flew to the sword lying across my knees, but I didn’t draw it. These soldiers seemed to be acting as an escort or honor guard, I thought, rather than a band of attackers.
When one turned slightly, I noticed the red-and-gold rampant lion stitched on the front of his blouse. The pattern matched Dworkin’s—these had to be his men.
I allowed myself to relax. We should be safe in their care. So close to this mysterious Juniper, what could go wrong?
The carriage slowed enough for them to keep up with us. Trying to appear uncurious, I opened the window again and pulled back the curtain a bit, studying the rider closest to us. Thick black braids hung down behind his rounded silver helmet, and he had a long, thin black mustache that flapped as he rode. His arms seemed odd, I decided—a little too long. And they seemed to be bending halfway between shoulder and elbow, as if they had an extra joint.
Suddenly he turned and looked straight at me. His slitted yellow eyes caught the light, glinting like a cat’s with an almost opalescent fire.
Swallowing, I let the curtain fall. Thus hidden, I continued to study him. These might be Dworkin’s guards, I thought, but they weren’t human. Nor did they have the unpleasant features of hell-creatures. So who—or what—were they?
Taking a deep breath, I forced myself to turn away. I’d seen enough. No sense brooding on questions I couldn’t yet answer.
My attention now focused on Freda, who had begun to shuffle her Tarot cards and lay them out again. Every few minutes she rearranged them into a different pattern, sometimes circular, sometimes diagonal, once square with a cascading pattern in the center.
“Solitaire?” I asked, trying to get her attention. Perhaps I could learn more from her.
“No.”
“I prefer games for two players, myself.”
“Games are for children and old men.”
I leaned forward, tilting my head and looking at her deck more carefully now. Rather than the standard Tarot cards such as any wisewoman or soothsayer might employ, filled with religious and astrological figures, these showed men and women I didn’t recognize and places I had never been—a strange castle, a dark forest glade, even a romantic beach bathed in the warm glow of moonlight . . . or moonslight, rather, for two moons hung in the sky—the artist’s idea of a joke, or a real place? I could no longer be sure.
Freda gathered the cards, shuffled seven times, and dealt out fifteen, three lines of five cards each. Only portraits of men and women came up. Most had features similar enough to Dworkin’s to be related to him.
“What do you see?” I finally asked after the waiting became impossible to bear.
“Our family.” She pointed to the cards before her. “Nine princes of Chaos, all torn asunder. Six princesses of Chaos, where do they wander.”
“I know fortune-tellers are always vague,” I said, taking a stab at humor. “But at least it rhymes, almost.”
“It is part of an old nursery verse:
I had never heard it before. And yet it did fit.
“A bit grim,” I said.
She shrugged. “I did not write it.”
With a start, I realized we were no longer speaking Tantari, but some other language, a richer one with a lilting rhythm. It spilled from her tongue like water from a glass, and I understood every word as though I had been speaking it all my life. How did I know it? More magic? Had I come under some spell without even realizing it?
Stammering a bit, unable to help myself, I asked her, “W-what language is this?”
“It’s Thari, of course,” she said, giving me the sort of odd, puzzled look you’d give the village idiot when he asked why water was wet.
Thari . . . It sounded right, somehow, and I knew on some inner level she spoke the truth. But how did I know it? When had I learned it?
My every thought and memory told me I never had.
And yet . . . and yet, now I spoke it like I’d known it my entire life. And I found it increasingly difficult to recall Tantari, my native tongue, as though it belonged to some distant, hazy dream.
“You have been in Shadow a long time, haven’t you?” she said with a sigh. “Sometimes it is easy to forget what that can do to you . . . ”
In Shadow? What did that mean?
Remembering the look she’d given me when I asked what language we spoke, I bit back my questions. I wouldn’t appear foolish or ignorant again, if I could help it.
Instead, I said, “Yes, I suppose I have been gone too long.” I didn’t know what else to say, and I didn’t want to volunteer too much and reveal my ignorance. “I hadn’t seen Dworkin in many years.”
“You still look confused,” she said, and then she gave a kinder laugh and reached out to pat my hand. Her skin, soft as silk, smelled of lavender and honey. “It does not matter.”
I smiled. Now we were getting somewhere.
“Wouldn’t you be confused, too?” I asked. “Pulled from my bed in the middle of the night to fight hell-creatures, trundled off in this ludicrous carriage, then thrown in here for a frantic midnight ride—all with no questions answered?”
“Probably.” She cleared her throat. “Thari is the primal tongue,” she said matter-of-factly, as though lecturing a small child who hadn’t learned his lessons properly. “It is the source of all languages in all the Shadow worlds. It is a part of you, just as everything around us is part of Chaos. You do remember the Courts of Chaos, don’t you?”
I shook my head, once again feeling foolish and ignorant. “Never been there, I’m afraid.”
“A pity. They are lovely, in their way.” Her eyes grew distant, remembering. I could tell she liked that place . . . the Courts of Chaos, she’d called it.
Hoping for more answers, I said, “It’s been quite a night. Or day now, I suppose. What do you think of all this?” I made a vague, sweeping gesture that covered the carriage, the riders, her cards. “What does it portend?”
“War is coming. All the signs are there. Everyone says so, especially Locke. He has been playing general long enough, he is bound to be good at it. But we will be safe enough in Juniper, I think. At least for now.”
“And this Juniper?”
“You have never been there, either?”
I shook my head. So much for my plan to keep my ignorance to myself.
“It is nothing like the Courts of Chaos, but for a Shadow, it is really quite lovely. Or used to be.”
That didn’t really help. So many new questions . . .  Juniper . . . Shadows . . . the Courts of Chaos—what were they?
I glanced at the window again, thinking about Chaos. At least that name sounded familiar. Reading from the Great Book was part of every religious holiday in Ilerium, and I had heard some of the most famous passages hundreds of times over the years. Our most sacred scriptures told how the Gods of Chaos wrought the Earth from nothingness, then fought over their creation. They were supposed to be great, magical beings who would someday return to smite the wicked and reward the pious.
As a soldier, I had never put much faith in anything I couldn’t see or touch. Deep down, I had always believed the stories set forth in the Great Book were nothing more than parables designed to teach moral lessons to children. But now, after all I had seen and done this night, it began to make a certain amount of sense. If the stories were literally true . . . 
I swallowed. The Gods of Chaos were supposed to return with fire and steel to punish those who didn’t believe. Perhaps the hell-creatures marked the beginning of their return. Perhaps we had been working against the Gods of Chaos all along and hadn’t realized it.
For they shall smite the wicked . . . 
No, I decided, I had to have misunderstood. The scriptures didn’t fit. The hell-creatures killed everyone, from priests to tradesmen, from doddering crones to the youngest of children. No gods could have sent such an army.
What were the Courts of Chaos, and where did Dworkin fit into all of this?
Freda seemed to sense my confusion. Smiling, she reached out and patted my hand again.
“I know it’s a lot for you,” she said. “Father did you no favors in letting you grow up in a distant Shadow. But on the other hand, that may be why you are still alive when so many others are not. I think he means you for something greater.”
I frowned. “You think so? What?”
“We can try to find out.”
In one quick motion, she gathered her deck of Tarot cards into a neat stack and set it in front of me. She tapped the top card once with her index finger.
“This deck has forty-six Trumps. Shuffle them well, then turn the top one. Let’s see what they tell us.”
Chuckling, I shook my head. “I don’t believe in fortune telling.”
“I do not tell fortunes. As Father says, even in Chaos there is a grand pattern emerging, truths and truisms if you will. The Trumps reflect them. Those who are trained—as I am—can sometimes see reflected in the cards not only what is, but what must be. Since the whole family is gathering in Juniper right now, it might be best for us to know where you stand . . . and who will stand with you.”
Giving a shrug, I said, “Very well.” I didn’t think it could hurt.
I picked up the cards. The backs had been painted a royal blue, with a rampant lion in gold in the middle. They were a little thicker than parchment, but hard and chill to the touch, with a texture almost like polished ivory,
I cut them in half, shuffled them together a couple of times, then set them down in front of Freda. The palms of my hands tingled faintly. A light sweat covered my face. Somehow, touching the cards had made me distinctly uncomfortable.
“Turn the first Trump,” she said.
I did so.
It showed Dworkin, but he was dressed as a fool in red and yellow silks, complete with bells on his cap and long pointed shoes that curled at the toes. It was the last thing I had expected to see, and I had to choke back a laugh.
“That’s ridiculous!” I said.
“Odd . . . ” Freda said, frowning. “The first turned is usually a place, not a person.” She set the card to the side, face up.
“Meaning . . . ?” I asked.
“Dworkin, the center of our family, who is now or will be the center of your world.”
I said, “Dworkin is no fool.”
“What matters is the person pictured on the card, not his clothing. Aber made these cards for me. Everyone knows he’s a bit of a prankster.”
Suddenly I had a new name to remember: Aber. Aber the prankster. I thought I might like him. And she seemed to assume I knew who he was.
“Turn another card,” she told me.
I did so. It depicted a younger man, fifteen or sixteen years old at most, dressed in yellows and browns. Without a doubt, he had to be another of Dworkin’s children—they shared the same eyes and strong chin. He wore a hat adorned with a set of preposterously large elk antlers and looked slightly bored, like he wanted to be off on adventures instead of having to sit for this miniature portrait. He held up a broadsword with both hands. It looked too long and too heavy for him. Somehow, he struck me as familiar, though I would have sworn we had never met—or had we?
Freda sucked in a surprised breath.
“Who is he?” I asked.
“Alanar,” she whispered.
Again, the name didn’t sound familiar, but I couldn’t rid myself of the feeling he and I had met somewhere before. I could half picture him lying in a pool of blood . . . but where? When?
“Maybe he’s coming back,” Freda said.
“No,” I said with certainty. “He’s dead.”
“How do you know?” she asked, searching my eyes with her own. “You haven’t met him.”
“I—don’t know.” I frowned, fumbling for the memory, finding it elusive. “Isn’t he dead?”
“He’s been missing for more than a year. Nobody’s heard from him or been able to contact him, even with his Trump. I thought he was dead. Everyone does. But none of us has any proof.”
Contact him . . . with his Trump? I looked down at the card, puzzling over that odd turn of phrase. Stranger and stranger, I thought.
“If you haven’t seen a body,” I said, trying to sound comforting though I knew it was a lie, knew that he was dead, “there is reason for hope.”
She shook her head. “Our enemies do not often leave bodies. If he is dead, we will never know it.”
I found myself agreeing. After battles, we had seldom been able to recover our dead comrades from lands the hell-creatures controlled. What they actually did with the corpses remained open to conjecture—and the guesses were never very pleasant.
Eyes distant, Freda shook her head sadly. I realized that she had cared deeply for young Alanar. We had something in common, then; I had lost Helda . . . she had lost her brother.
Swallowing, I reached out and gave her hand a sympathetic squeeze. “Best not to dwell on it,” I said softly. “These have been hard times for everyone.”
“You are right, of course.” Taking a deep breath, Freda placed Alanar’s card on the table, a little below Dworkin’s jester and to the right. Next to each other, their resemblance was even more striking. Clearly they were father and son.
“Pick again,” she said, indicating the Trumps.
Silently, I did so. It was another young man, this one dressed in browns and greens, with a wide pleasant version of Dworkin’s face. A faint dueling scar marked his left cheek, but he had a genial smile. He carried a bow in one hand and what looked like a wine flask in the other. A trickle of wine ran down his lips and beaded underneath his chin.
A young drunkard, the card seemed to suggest.
“Taine,” Freda announced, keeping her expression carefully neutral.
“I don’t know him,” I said.
“I think he is dead, too.”
“I’m sorry.”
We went through four more cards rapidly. Each showed a man between the ages of twenty and forty. Most bore some resemblance to Dworkin—either the eyes, the shapes of the faces, or the way in which they held themselves. His offspring almost certainly, I decided. It seemed he’d kept busy with a number of women over the years. How many children had he sired? And with such a large family, how had he still found so much time to spend with me during my own youth—all the while pretending to be unmarried? The next time I had him alone, I intended to ask.
Each of these cards Freda placed below Dworkin’s, circling the edge of the table. In all, counting Alanar and Taine, she thought four of Dworkin’s sons were dead. I didn’t recognize either of the other two.
Then I turned over a card that showed a man with my face, only his eyes were brown to my blue. He dressed all in dark browns and yellows, and he held a slightly crooked sword almost defiantly. I didn’t know if it was a private joke, but certainly the crooked sword seemed to imply one.
“Who is he?” I asked hesitantly. He looked familiar, too. Where had we met? And when?
“Do you know him?”
“He looks a lot like me . . . ”
I held the card a minute, just staring at it, until she took it out of my hand and placed it below the others.
“Mattus,” she said. “His name is Mattus.”
“He’s dead, too,” I said numbly.
“How do you know?” she demanded, voice rising sharply.
I shrugged helplessly. “I don’t now. It’s like . . . like an old memory, distant and hazy. Or maybe a dream. I can almost see it, but not quite. I only know he was in it, though, and I saw him die.”
“What happened to him?” she went on. “How did he die?”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I can’t quite remember,” But I felt certain it hadn’t been pleasant, though I couldn’t bring myself to say so to Freda. I didn’t think she’d take the news well. Clearly she had cared for Mattus.
She sighed.
“Maybe it was only a dream,” I told her, trying to sound a little reassuring, a little hopeful, though deep inside I knew it for a lie. “Perhaps they are both still alive, somewhere.”
“Do not dismiss your dreams so easily. They are often powerful portents of the future. Over the years, I have had hundreds of dreams that proved to be true. If you say both Alanar and Mattus are dead, and you saw them die in a dream, it may very well be so.”
“It was only a dream.”
“Perhaps I believe because you saw it in a dream.”
“As you say,” I said with a small shrug. Most of the time, I put as little stock in dreams as in fortune-tellers.
Sitting back, I regarded her and her cards. It seemed she shared Dworkin’s strengths as well as his flaws. He had never been one to shy away from bad news, no matter how terrible. It was one lesson I had learned well from him.
I said, “Tell me about Mattus.”
“Like Alanar, he has been missing for about a year. Nobody has been able to contact him. He always had a quick temper, though, and one night he stormed off after a shouting match with Locke . . . and that was the last anyone heard of him.”
Locke was a disagreeable-looking, puffed-up man on one of the other Trumps I had drawn. She had mentioned him earlier, I recalled, with a disparaging note in her voice. Clearly they were at odds.
She added, “I had hoped Mattus would get over his sulk and simply show up one day, forgiving Locke and taking up where we had all left off, before . . . ” She smiled wistfully and blinked back tears. “But that is not your concern right now, Oberon. Please, go on. Draw again.”
Quickly, I turned the next card.
“Aber,” she said. She added him to the other eight Tarot cards to form a circle around the top of the table.
I leaned forward for a better look at this prankster who painted cards so well. He was ruggedly handsome—at least as portrayed on the card—and he dressed all in deep reds, from his leggings to his tunic, from his gloves to his long, flowing cape. It was hard to tell, but I thought we looked about the same age. He had short brown hair, a close-cropped brown beard, and steady gray-green eyes. In his portrait he struck a valiant pose, but instead of a sword, he held a long paint brush. I gave a mental chuckle. Truly, he had a sense of humor that appealed to me.
I also saw a bit of Dworkin in him, the oddly whimsical side that only came out on rare occasions, usually at high holidays or festivals when he had drunk too much wine. Then he would delight one and all with small tricks of the hand, making coins appear and disappear, or recite epic tales of ancient heroes and their adventures.
It must have been a trick of the light, but as I studied Aber’s card intently, I would have sworn that it took on an almost lifelike appearance. It seemed to me that the tiny image blinked and started to turn its head—but before anything more could happen, Freda reached out and covered it with her palm.
“Do not!” she said in a warning tone.
I raised my eyes to her face, which had suddenly gone cold and hard. Perhaps, I thought, there was more to her than I first suspected. This was no mere fortune-teller, but a strong woman who had suddenly moved to action and taken charge of the situation. I admired her for that; I had never found much to like in weak-willed females. A woman of fire and steel added extra passion to a love affair.
“Why?” I asked blankly.
“It is already cramped in here. We do not need his company right now. And Father would be quite annoyed with me if I let him drag you away.”
“Very well,” I said, confused. For now, I had to trust her to look out for my best interests. Leaning back, I folded my arms and gave her my most trustworthy look. “I wasn’t trying to cause you trouble.”
She sighed, her manner softening. “No, not . . . trouble. Aber can be a . . . a distraction. That’s a good word for it. And a distraction is not what we need right now.”
I tilted my head and studied her cards from what I hoped would prove a safe distance. The more I thought about it, the more certain I became that Aber’s picture had moved. But cards couldn’t come to life, could they?
After all the magic and wonders I had witnessed over the last few hours, suddenly I wasn’t so sure.

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